At Udacity, we’re proud to launch scholarship programs, often in partnership with major tech companies, to support those learners who want access to new skills. And, our Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree Program Scholarship in collaboration with Nutanix was a welcome addition to our collection of programs.

In fact, as we launched the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program scholarship, we discovered that this program attracted really passionate students from across the globe, in different industries with different experiences. 

We want to celebrate these students as well as the launch of the Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree program, and share their experiences so that it may inspire others to reinvest in their education to be ready for the new world of work. 

Udacity’s Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree Program

Georgina Palavecino, Buenos Aires, Argentina

“After trying so hard to enter the IT world, I finally got a chance this year. I can’t believe I’m in a trainee/ junior position at 30 years old. This has been such an amazing journey. I’ve been learning about technologies I haven’t worked with before. One of these is Cloud Computing.

“I have previous knowledge of telecommunications and have already worked with invoicing cloud consumptions, but I never had the opportunity to understand that world. So, as part of my training, I wanted to be able to handle more than one cloud environment and I found this scholarship a great opportunity to get to know more.

“I’m already a Udacity Nanodegree graduate. I was missing that experience so much that I applied because as a new woman in this field, networking isn’t easy. Also, I  am interested in Nutanix because I am very interested in Hybrid Cloud. 

“I want to take all the chances I can to help grow my career. I am studying to be an entrepreneur and want to give other aspiring students knowledge and experience while helping small businesses here in my city.”

Christine Miyachi, Cambridge, MA, USA

“I am a lifelong learner and a few years ago when MOOCs started, I began to learn online. I found Udacity, looked at their high-quality courses, and I always wanted to take one. With kids in college, I could never afford to invest in my personal learning. 

“But, when a scholarship opportunity came up on Privacy in the Cloud, I jumped at the chance. However, when I joined the Slack channel, I was overwhelmed. I lost my confidence and dropped out — a decision I regretted later. 

“So when another scholarship became available in AI Foundations, I applied and completed the course. In addition, I became a student leader for the #women_who_code channel and did a showcase project. You can watch the app in action here. I also won an award for my service in student leadership from my peers.

“I’ve been in the industry for more than 30 years and cloud computing skills are something that is asked for by potential employers. I also missed the energy of working with a large group of students. If I had an issue, I could get it answered within hours from my fellow students.  If I needed motivation, it was easy to find. There is so much intelligence on the Slack channels, it is infectious!  

“I know from the projects we do I will be able to showcase my skills and understanding in this area.”

Rahulraj Singh, Bangalore, India

“I have been a Udacity student for about four years now. I started when I was in college. I wanted my college project to stand out so I was searching for online courses on Machine Learning. I like the fact that Udacity courses talk about the real-world implementation of concepts. This is a major differentiator for Udacity. For example, learning all the ML algorithms is one thing, but what makes you industry-ready is to know which one to use for which problem, assess the cost implications, and then judge the optimal solution that is not just based on the prediction score but also on its execution possibilities.

“I applied for the Nutanix Cloud Scholarship because of the industry’s shift towards the cloud. I have been working with Azure for two years now and ever since Amazon launched AWS a decade ago the rate at which companies are adapting to the cloud is exponential. 

“But at the same time, there were some things about these cloud offerings that bothered me. For example, how do companies trust their data with someone else? What if something goes wrong in the server situated in North America if I am working from India? How long will the resolution time be? I did research about all this and found out that the cloud I had been using was one part of the big picture — public cloud. There was also a concept of a private cloud where these issues had already been addressed. 

“A hybrid cloud solves all these problems. Nutanix is a company that I have been following for some time, ever since they set up a campus next to my office in Bangalore. 

“It is early to say if the foundational course has already brought a change to my professional life. But something I was able to relate to was Cloud Migration. I had recently gone through a complete cloud migration lifecycle at my organization and seen all the issues that the instructor talked about, that could have potentially led to failure in migrating. Apart from this, another important learning has been time management. Working for about 9-10 hours and giving 2 hours to this course meant I had to be more productive than ever. “

Vincent Battaglia, San Francisco, CA, USA

“Working at Expedia, I became fascinated with the tech side of the business. As an Account Manager, I was very curious about how the various tech teams throughout the organizations collaborated on building such incredible features and tools (both internal and customer-facing). I was inspired to learn more.

“Initially, I started speaking with developers and TPMs to understand more about their job, and what type of roles existed within the multitude of tech teams within the Expedia Group. 

“Recently, I have completed the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Engineering Introductory course via Udacity. The course was extremely useful and helped me understand the architecture supporting web applications, public vs. private cloud infrastructure, virtualization (and how that compares to HCI vs. Docker/Containers), and really how this entire ecosystem is organized and maintained by large business organizations. 

“I don’t think many developers realize how crucial this understanding is, and how it can truly propel your knowledge and understanding of an organization’s architecture/tech stack to help you engage fluently with stakeholders and leadership, and ultimately lead to building better applications while making informed decisions.

“Our Account Management teams were on reduced hours due to COVID. I had Fridays off and I was able to dedicate some time to developing a few features and getting my feet wet as a developer by accepting a part-time position at an Education Tech start-up, while still maintaining my full-time account management role. 

“After finishing the Nutanix/Udacity Introductory course, it led me to apply for an internal Software Development Engineering rotational position on the Traffic Engineering team at Expedia Group. I am now fully dedicated to ramping up as an SDE for the next three months and supporting their team in their current business objectives which are highly relevant to the knowledge that I’ve acquired after learning about Hybrid Cloud Engineering.” 

Sean Brown, Washington D.C., USA

“I’ve always had a passion for technology and knew this was my calling since high school. I’ve been a technology professional for approximately 15 years.

“During my career, there have been many transformational shifts in the industry that I can now say I was privileged to experience. Some of these moments were frightening at the time, but ultimately I go back to the word privilege because it allowed me to realize the power of technology. I’ve always enjoyed the complexity involved in building and delivering simple solutions to solve life challenges. 

“I became more familiar with Nutanix in my current role as an IT Engineer in the legal industry. The firm I’m with is a Nutanix customer and it is a frequent topic of discussion by our infrastructure team. I had a natural curiosity to learn more about the platform. Making difficult operations simple for the customer should be at the core of technology and is the most rewarding part of being in this field to me. Simplicity is the basis of all Nutanix products so it was a natural fit.

“I discovered the Nutanix Hybrid Cloud Scholarship in partnership with Udacity via social media. My initial thought was it would be really difficult to be selected. To my surprise, I was selected for the Round 1 Challenge. I’ve been very grateful to have this experience and have learned many things I can take with me in my professional career. This program has helped me see the value of simplicity, choice, and renting vs. owning technology depending on the situation.”

As organizations move towards cloud functionality, the need for cloud infrastructure expertise increases. So if you want to make it big in this field — like Rahul, Georgina, Vincent or Sean — then check our latest  Hybrid Cloud Nanodegree Program today!

Ritika Pradhan
Ritika Pradhan
Ritika is the Content Manager at Udacity and is passionate about bringing inspirational student stories to light. When not talking to the amazing Udacity students, she can be found reading an article or watching a video on the internet.